MSC leads on U.S. inbound capacity

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

The liner carrier Mediterranean Shipping Co. is the leading provider of allocated capacity to the United States, according to figures this week from American Shipper liner research affiliate ComPair Data’s World Liner Supply Analytics (WLSA).
The European line, second largest in the world, currently provides an estimated 60,555 TEUs of weekly allocated capacity. That accounts for 13.2 percent of all U.S. inbound capacity. Total weekly allocated capacity to the United States stood at 457,362 TEUs on Dec. 4.
Carriers have deployed 752 vessels, with a total deployed capacity of nearly 3.4 million TEUs, on U.S. inbound trades.
Maersk Line is the second biggest operator of U.S. inbound allocated capacity, at 46,627 TEUs per week (10.2 percent of all inbound capacity). Rounding out the top five are Hapag-Lloyd (32,001 TEUs per week), APL (28,145 TEUs), and CMA CGM (27,010 TEUs).
By alliance, the CKYH Alliance (COSCO Container Lines, “K” Line, Yang Ming, and Hyundai Merchant Marine) operates 70,957 TEUs of weekly allocated capacity; the Grand Alliance (Hapag-Lloyd, NYK Line, and OOCL) operates 67,957 TEUs; and the New World Alliance (APL, Hyundai Merchant Marine, and MOL) operates 55,935 TEUs.
Bear in mind that not all capacity from individual alliance members comes under the auspices of those alliances.
ComPair Data WLSA also provides a glimpse of which lines are providing the most vessels and deployed capacity inbound to the United States. Maersk provides the most vessels on U.S. inbound trades, with 84. MSC is second, with 81. MSC also has the most deployed capacity on U.S. inbound trades, with 445,190 TEUs. Maersk is second, at 419,766 TEUs.
The average vessel size deployed on U.S. inbound trades for MSC is 5,496 TEUs – that’s nearly 10 percent larger the average vessel Maersk deploys on U.S. inbound routes (4,997 TEUs). Hapag-Lloyd’s average vessel to the United States is 4,422 TEUs, APL’s is 5,123 TEUs, and CMA CGM’s is 5,109 TEUs.
ComPair Data tracks service data for liner services on a global basis including the complete rotation, transit time and vessel data for each service. ComPair Data then applies an algorithm that assigns a trade weight to each port-to-port pair included in a service, factoring in the volume of services between the two ports and a measure of the competitiveness of the port-to-port transit times on the service relative to other services operating between the same ports. The algorithm calculates an estimate of the percentage of the vessel capacity that is assigned to cargo moving between the two ports.
ComPair Data then combines the allocations for all the validated port-to-port connections that come within the trade route scope to come up with an estimation of the service capacity that is allocated to the trade route. ComPair Data refers to this as allocated Capacity.